Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, set off a debate by saying that families struggling with money can skip movies and restaurant dinners and still have children. Her comments date from December 2024, but they keep going viral, often with an out-of-date price tag. Here is what she said, and what raising a child costs now.
Maye Musk first posted on X on December 6, 2024, replying to an account that called the idea that kids are too expensive a “convenient cope”, Fortune reported. She wrote that having children is the greatest gift, and that her family did not go out for dinner or to the movies. On December 15 on Fox & Friends, asked about the falling birth rate, which her son often talks about, she repeated the point.
She described her own start: a small two-bedroom apartment overlooking a garage, then an apartment with a view after her second child, and a two-bedroom house by her third, The Mary Sue reported. Many commenters pushed back. Some said movies and dinners are not what strains a family budget, and pointed to hospital birth costs and daycare, according to AOL.
What a child costs now
The figure most posts quote, $297,674, is last year’s. LendingTree’s 2026 report puts the 18-year cost of raising a child at $303,418 after tax exemptions and credits, up 1.9%.
That works out to about $29,325 a year for the first five years and $12,061 a year for the next 13. Families spend an average of 21.9% of their income on a small child’s basic expenses, from 13.9% in Washington, D.C. to 27.4% in Hawaii, LendingTree found.
Money is also shaping choices. In a 2025 LendingTree survey of 630 parents, 46% of parents with young children said they have fewer kids because of financial limits, and 77% said raising children was far more expensive than they expected, NewsNation reported. Supporters of Maye Musk’s view say priorities matter, while critics say costs such as daycare are the real issue.
